The Gibraltar Excursion
Having exhausted the riches that lay in Maracaibo Morgan had set his sights on Gibraltar at the southern tip of Lake of Maracaibo. From questioning all his prisoners he’d found a dozen or so who were known in Gibraltar. These people would be his messengers and his hostages.
He knew from the accounts that were coming in from interrogating1 prisoners and from the Indians living in the villages near Maracaibo that the Spanish were concentrating their troops in Gibraltar. Whatever wealth lay in that town he was going to have to fight for it.
Five miles from the town, Morgan ordered the fleet to anchor. A canoe was slowly hoisted down onto the water and the prisoners climbed one by one down into the vessel, with buccaneers manning the oars. One of the buccaneers had a white flag and as they rowed away from the fleet and headed towards the town, they raised this white flag as a sign of truce.
At the town, the prisoners were set free but they had been given specific instructions ‘to require the inhabitants to surrender, otherwise Captain Morgan would certainly put them all to the sword, without any quarter.’
This time, the Spaniards were defiant and as Morgan brought the fleet close to the town within the range of the guns at the fort they were ‘saluted with a furious Fire from the Cannon of the Place; But this noways [sic] damped their Spirits, these Showers of death only animated them with the greater Fury.’2
Morgan sailed his little fleet out of range of the guns and ordered the fleet to lower their anchors. Now he could see the town and he studied it for some time. On one side was a wooded area that had accessible beaches for canoes. He could easily land his men on those beaches and then they would march through the woods to the town. He’d done it before and knew it wouldn’t be difficult. They waited overnight and began the assault in the morning.
They marched towards the town, not by the common way, but crossing through the woods, which way the Spaniards scarce thought they would have come; for the beginning of their march they made as if they intended to come the next and open way to the town, hereby to deceive the Spaniards; but these remembering full well what Lolonais [sic] had done but two years before, thought it not safe to expect a second brunt, and hereupon all fled out of the town as fast as they could carrying all their goods and riches.3
When they entered the town, Morgan and his buccaneers found the place empty. As with Maracaibo, the buccaneers set up houses for themselves and Morgan set up a temporary headquarters. He sent out search parties to look for the inhabitants of the town hiding in the woods. But this initial attempt at locating the wealthy and their riches failed, unlike in Maracaibo.
Morgan changed his strategy, realizing that at some point the people in hiding were going to have to come back to their plantations and country houses for provisions for ‘they could not live on what the woods afforded,’ writes Esquemeling. Morgan divided his men into many smaller search parties and sent them out in all directions to the plantations and country houses, where they would wait for the Spaniards to return for supplies.
This strategy soon paid off as the buccaneers brought to Morgan’s headquarters more than 250 prisoners. Day and night, Morgan and his captains questioned these people, asking them the same thing over and over: where had they hidden their wealth, who else was hiding in the woods and where was their treasure?
However, how these prisoners were treated is a key question. Let’s not forget that Esquemeling’s account is crucial to understanding the events that took place on this expedition. But how accurate are his accounts is also in question.
For example, he states that when the buccaneers arrived in Gibraltar and found the city empty he claims that they found one man ‘who was born a fool’. The buccaneers demanded information from this man, a mentally disabled individual who was incapable of answering their questions. Over and over they asked him where the inhabitants of the town had gone to and where they’d hidden their wealth. The poor man could not answer them. The buccaneers tortured him. ‘They presently put him to the rack, and tortured him with cords; which torments forced him to cry out: “Do not torture me anymore but come with me, and I will show you my goods and my riches.”’
According to Esquemeling the man then led the buccaneers to a dilapidated cottage where he gave them the few items he had, which were of no value, and three pieces of eight. This man told them he was the brother of the governor of Maracaibo and for some reason, known only to Esquemeling, they tortured him again. At that point the story moves on and the fate of this poor fool is never explained.
Esquemeling then provides another account of the inhumane actions of the buccaneers when he states that they ‘brought back an honest peasant with two daughters of his, whom they intended to torture as they used others, if they showed not the places where the inhabitants were hid.’ This peasant knew where some of the town’s inhabitants were hiding and told the buccaneers so. He took them to these places but the Spaniards had moved on, ‘farther off into the thickest of the woods, where they built themselves huts, to preserve from the weather those few goods they had.’
Esquemeling tells us that the buccaneers believed the man had deceived them so they promptly hung him from a tree. What happened to his daughters is anyone’s guess.
Interestingly, Pope does not mention either of these two incidents in his biography of Morgan. Nor does he mention the next two incidents that Esquemeling attributed to the buccaneers.
According to Esquemeling, one of the search parties sent to the country houses found a slave (Indian) and offered him ‘mountains of gold and his liberty, by transporting him to Jamaica, if he would show them where the inhabitants of Gibraltar lay hid.’ This individual took the buccaneers to the place where the Spanish were hiding from the buccaneers, who took them all as prisoners. They commanded this slave ‘to kill some before the eyes of the rest; that by this perpetrated crime, he might never be able to leave their wicked company.’ According to the account, this slave carried out the orders from the buccaneers with a certain amount of gusto and ‘committed many murders and insolences upon the Spaniards.’ The rest were brought back as prisoners and became part of the overall 250 prisoners collected and questioned by Morgan.
The final event that Esquemeling recounts is perhaps the most bizarre. He states that among these prisoners was a Portuguese man who was reported by one of the slaves to be very rich. This, Esquemeling tells us, was a false accusation. The man tried to tell the buccaneers that he only had 100 pieces of eight to his name, which had been stolen two days earlier by his servant. Naturally, the buccaneers didn’t believe him and they committed a wide variety of tortures on him to get him to talk.
Esquemeling then devotes an entire paragraph to the various tortures the buccaneers committed on this man before he finally broke down and paid them 1,000 pieces of eight. ‘These he raised, and having paid them, got his liberty; though so horribly maimed, that it is scarce to be believed he could survive many weeks.’4
At no time in these accounts does Esquemeling even mention that Morgan had anything to do with torture. He only ever refers to the people who carried out these atrocities as ‘the pirates’, so the question of truth becomes even more critical in an account of the life of Henry Morgan.
Perhaps the best source to use to see if these accounts have any truth in them is Stephen Talty’s book, Empire of Blue Water. He suggests that the accounts outlined by Esquemeling should be taken ‘with a grain of salt’. Indeed, it is his belief that ‘there is little in the record outside of Esquemeling’s account to suggest that Morgan was a monster capable of such things.’5
He continues by saying that Esquemeling probably made up these accounts of cruelties at the behest of his publisher.
The innocent fool chattering away to the pirates about his famous relatives, ensuring his own death, and the Portuguese miser who endured a Golgotha just to save 500 pesos—they are beautiful touches.6
However, there is no doubt that there were cruelties on these buccaneering expeditions, as Talty points out. Everyone who signed on understood the rules of engagement. People who resisted the buccaneers essentially opened themselves up to all kinds of barbaric treatment at their hands. There was no Geneva Convention about the treatment of prisoners; indeed, there was no policy at all. How prisoners were treated depended on whether or not they resisted, whether or not they paid and especially whether or not they annoyed the buccaneers by calling their bluff. ‘There was no policy, that is, except that every last piece of eight should be wrung from every last prisoner.’7
Morgan’s questioning of his prisoners revealed some interesting information. A slave told him that he could lead Morgan and his men to ‘a river of the lake, where he should find a ship and four boats, richly laden with goods of the inhabitants of Maracaibo.’ The slave also knew that the governor of Gibraltar was hiding on a small island in the middle of the river, ‘with the greatest part of the women of the town’.8
Following up on this information, Morgan decided to split his forces and sent 200 men in the canoes to go after the ship and small boats while he would lead 250 men to find the governor and bring him back as a hostage. The governor had built a small fort on the island, ‘as well as he could, for his defence; but hearing that Captain Morgan came in person with great forces to seek him, he retired to the top of a mountain not far off, to which there was no ascent but by a very narrow passage.’9
Morgan and his men were determined to get to the governor but foul weather made traversing the passage almost impossible. Each man would have to move through the passage in single file and would be at the mercy of anyone above with enough ammunition to pick them off at his leisure. Indeed, Esquemeling states that ‘the governor was well provided with all sorts of ammunition: beside, there was fallen a huge rain, whereby all the pirates’ baggage and powder was wet.’
On this mission, Morgan lost some of his men and some of the mules carrying ‘plate and goods which were taken from the fugitive inhabitants’ were swept away. He had no choice but to return almost empty-handed.
The men who Morgan had sent after the boats fared little better. Once again, the Spaniards heard the buccaneers were on the march looking for them and managed to unload the wealth and goods they had on the boats and hid it before they disappeared into the woods. However, they did not unload everything. ‘They left both in the ship and the boats great parcels of goods . . . which the pirates seized and brought thereof a considerable booty unto Gibraltar.’10
The buccaneers had been in Gibraltar for five weeks and now it was time to leave. Morgan knew that over the time they’d been away from Maracaibo the Spaniards would have been able to fortify the channel leading into the lake, which would make his escape difficult indeed.
But he had one more action to perform while still in Gibraltar. He decided to ransom the town and ‘ordered some prisoners to go forth into the woods and fields, and collect a ransom for the town, otherwise they would certainly burn it down to the ground.’11
The prisoners returned with news that the governor had forbidden them to pay anything for the town. Ignoring this direction from the governor the prisoners asked Morgan for more time, saying they could probably raise around 5,000 pieces of eight and some of the townspeople would act as hostages while the money was collected and paid to Morgan when he reached Maracaibo.
Conscious of the time he’d been away and the need to get back up to Maracaibo, out of the lake and into the open sea before the Spaniards were able to stop him, Morgan agreed to their proposition and immediately began making preparations to leave. He then set all the prisoners free while under the new agreement the Spanish ‘delivered him four person[s] agreed on for hostages of what money more he was to receive.’ Morgan also held onto the slaves, afraid that if he handed them over to the people of the town they would be burned alive for having helped the buccaneers.
At last, they weighed anchor, and set sail in all haste for Maracaibo; here they arrived in four days, and found all things as they had left them; yet here they received news from a poor distressed old man, whom they found sick in the town, that three Spanish men-of-war were arrived at the entry of the lake, waiting the return of the pirates; moreover, that the castle at the entry thereof was again put into good posture of defence, well provided with guns and men, and all sorts of ammunition.12
Morgan quickly called his captains together and ordered the one with the fastest vessel to set sail to investigate this alarming news. The following day this captain returned, telling Morgan that the news the old man had related was true. There were three men-of-war at the entrance to the lake; one of thirty-six large guns and twelve small guns; another of twenty-six guns and twelve smaller guns; and the third of sixteen large and eight small guns.
That was it. It was over. How could Morgan possibly get out of this situation? His fleet was outgunned in every respect. ‘Considering the difficulty of passing safe with his little fleet amidst those great ships and the fort; or he must perish.’ They could see no way of escaping by sea or by land.
Morgan and his men were trapped.